Gay Spirualy: Gay Inty and the Transformatn of Human Conscns – Johnson |

Contents:

• GAY SPIRUALY PAPERBACK – ILLTRATED, FEBARY 22, 2004
• SPIRUAL GAY MEN'S GROUP NYC
• GAY SPIRUALY
• THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRUALY AMONG GAY AND LBIAN DIVIDUALS
• GAY SPIRUALY: GAY INTY AND THE TRANSFORMATN OF HUMAN CONSCNS – JOHNSON
• WHAT IS "GAY SPIRUALY"?
• THE GAY MAN AS SPIRUAL APT<BR>OM THE TRODUCTN TO 'GAY SPIRUALY'
• A GROUNDSWELL OF GAY SPIRUALY
• GAY SPIRUALY AND THE RADIL FAERI
• SECTN 2: KNOWG GAYS AND LBIANS, RELIG CONFLICTS, BELIEFS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY

GAY SPIRUALY PAPERBACK – ILLTRATED, FEBARY 22, 2004

And yet, spe of this mutual hostily, and spe of the virtual taboo around spirualy most queer ntexts, there are many lbian, gay and bisexual people for whom both spirualy and sexualy are sourc of strength and joy. Another gay man, Steve Hope, is a Quaker; he fds “the eedom li beg as open as possible to ever more reali and experienc, and to share and be enriched by other people’s experience.

” Another gay man, Steve Hope, is a Quaker; he fds “the eedom li beg as open as possible to ever more reali and experienc, and to share and be enriched by other people’s experience. If you read any of the lbian or gay magaz or books now available, or watch some of the numero lbian and gay movi that have been released the last few years, or go to the pri march and ftivals which take place most major Wtern ci, you’ll quickly pick up how gay men and lbians drs, what mic they listen to, what they do wh their leisure time, and much else bis. The are jt the superficial trappgs of two very ep-rooted beliefs: that sexual orientatn is centrally important to your life, and that there are fg characteristics of gay men and of lbians beyond their sexual preferenc.

SPIRUAL GAY MEN'S GROUP NYC

Morn lbian and gay people are happy to divi themselv off like this bee they unrstand their differenc om heterosexuals as beg posively to their advantage-and bee queers are the on makg this distctn, not the victims of . The “Gay Spirualy” movement that they are volved tak as s role mols people om earlier cultur who viated om the domant genr and sexual norms, and unrtook spirual work and learship-most famoly, shamans and Native Amerin berdache.

However, ultimately I mt reject this Gay Spirualy for the same reason that I reject homophobic relign-bee do not acknowledge the vastns of realy, nor do rrpond to my experience. Gay men, for stance, n be jt-if not more-macho, objectifyg, emotnally articulate and misogynist as the next (straight) man (and I know many straight men who display none of those characteristics). In a future society that eely acknowledg the whole spectm of human sexualy, homosexual people will no longer be “queer” outsirs and g out will no longer be the same talyst for self-realizatn that is currently.

Peter Ashby-Saracen agre, while clearly valug the experience his sexual orientatn has brought him: “Beg gay is one maniftatn of beg human, and beg human is, among other thgs, to be aware of our place the wir `scheme of thgs. Spirual tradns aspire to enpass the whole of realy-the breadth of human experience, the mystery of existence, the immensy and variety of the smos-which is not somethg lbian and gay inty, however proud, n do.

GAY SPIRUALY

In the words of Lev, a man I spoke to who belongs to the Jewish havur’a movement and Radil Faeri, as well as drawg on Eastern tradns, “When I’ve felt most spirually nnected is when I’ve had the strongt and cleart sense of my re beg, rather than beg a Jew, beg a gay man, beg a profsnal, beg whe, whatever. Please go to the Fancial Assistance page on the Gay Spir Visns webse for more rmatn about fancial assistance (scholarships) and for a lk to the GSV fancial assistance applitn form.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRUALY AMONG GAY AND LBIAN DIVIDUALS

I am very exced to be the nvener for the Gay Spir Visns 2023 Sprg Retreat and look forward to sharg our experienc of timacy and vulnerabily as we explore the var thrholds we will enunter while movg om vulnerabily to eper timacy — wh ourselv, wh each other, and wh the Dive.

GAY SPIRUALY: GAY INTY AND THE TRANSFORMATN OF HUMAN CONSCNS – JOHNSON

He and Kip Dollar, partners sce 1984, ran the lbian/gay muny bookstore At for seven years and later two gay Bed & Breakfasts, first the Rocki and then back the Texas Hill Country.

Johnson’s central ia is that as outsirs wh non-genr-polarized perspective, homosexuals play an tegral role the evolutn of nscns—pecially regardg the unrstandg of relign as myth and metaphor—and that for many homosexuals gay inty is a transformative elogil, spirual, and even mystil votn. Fdg Your Own Te Myth: What I Learned om Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III is Toby Johnson's spirual tobgraphy reuntg how he learned the real nature of relign and disvered the spirual quali of gay nscns. E., LGBTQIA, and wrten om a gay man’s perspective, Gay Spirualy shows how the experience of beg an outsir, a viant wh different feelgs and attus, and not part of the ordary human round of birth, reproductn, and ath affords s own kd of enlightenment and visn of greater meang for life and for God.

Still timely and SPIRITUALITY: Gay Inty and the Transformatn of Conscns offers a sensible, morn and enlightened unrstandg of spirual nscns for gay men who are so often faced wh misunrstandg and nflict alg wh tradnal relign. Acclaimed thor Toby Johnson prents a bold perspective: beg the outsir and nscns sut allows cuttg edge this Lambda Lerary award-wng tle, Toby Johnson explor how the rise of gay inty has bee an important part of ntemporary relig velopment.

WHAT IS "GAY SPIRUALY"?

That might have worked as a slogan the 1970s movement for gay libratn (which I am grateful for) but at the end of the day, I have to nont myself and fd peace the hidn recs of my soul that are hidn to the world.

I ask myself those tim when no one is lookg and I do not have to fend my gay persona – if my nscience is troublg me so much, and I am not at peace, then maybe this whole Gay thg is ed jt sful and toxic, poisono.

So, if so happens that I equently fd myself spirals of guilt and self nmnatn…if I fd myself beg overwhelmed by my gayns as a ‘s’, I need to remember that my foc is the wrong place. Acrdg to a 2019 Pew Rearch Center analysis, 26 percent of Amerins intify as agnostic, atheist or “nothg particular, ” up om 17 percent jt a Sharon Klebm, of Congregatn Be Simchat Torah, New York’s LGBTQ synagogue, said the barriers gay people face when participatg their fah have only started to fall. “There’s been progrs, but I al wh people all the time om liberal relig fai who have faced horrible bigotry and rejectn, ” she, she add, the hunger for spirualy is ep among gay people — perhaps even eper than among the larger populatn.

THE GAY MAN AS SPIRUAL APT<BR>OM THE TRODUCTN TO 'GAY SPIRUALY'

5 percent intify as Jewish and 2 percent as the percentage of gay Amerins who intify as part of any fah tradn is still nsirably lower than the general populatn, of which 67 percent is relig, acrdg to a 2017 Gallup LGBTQ Black Amerins, the most likely mographic to be relig (over 70 percent), still lag behd Black people the general populatn: More than 82 percent are relig. In fact, is by our issu that relig people are beg tted on the real msage of their fah: Do they obey the mandment to love their neighbor or do they give to prejudice and homophobia? By appealg to homophobia, based an outmod view of human nature, stead of helpg to cure for everybody's good, they show their failure to abi by the basic teachgs they proclaim about love and passn, they exemplify their abily to pe wh the morn world, and they monstrate (to , at least) that they are not beg led by dive guidance.

" While people obvly had homosexual sex the past and formed iendship circl and social cliqu wh other people like themselv, until recently only a rare few intified themselv thereby or experienced that fact as a source of distctive and posive personaly tras.

In spe of the ntrary exampl that n be offered, there is a goodns and virtue that ns through gay men's liv, and a monstratn of real spirualy how many of rolve the problem of makg sense of relign the morn world. Many gay men, however, reject neher their religns--their will to be good, kd, and hont and their tert spirual matters--nor their homosexualy and their enjoyment of the adventure of beg gay. This is what relign should be dog--both for homosexuals who are disverg their te inty and for heterosexuals who are tormented wh anxieti about their own sexual orientatn--but is not.

A GROUNDSWELL OF GAY SPIRUALY

Eley is Print of Beloved Disciple Prs, a small publisher New Haven, Connecticut, which is publishg Rley’s say as the book, God’s Gay Tribe: Layg the Foundatns of Communal Memory. And nsir this: Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the natn’s largt gay, lbian, bi-sexual anizatn, and a man not prevly noted for spirual nvictn, recently appeared at Yale Divy School and spoke of g out as spirually important.

He stated, “As gay women and men, we don’t procreate, we validate” He said that out gays validate to straight people, and to each other, that “God is a God of diversy”, that homosexualy is betiful, and that hidg the closet, or reprsg others, “dishonors the Creator” and the Creator’s artful and wonrful tentns “for human life and muny. The book begs wh a quote om Judy Grahn’s Another Mother Tongue: “The day I saw a poster clarg the existence of an anizatn of Gay Amerin Indians, I put my face to my hands and sobbed wh relief.... Specifilly exclud om the list of published rourc are: novels and poetry; ems wrten languag other than English; brochur, study guis, and tracts; articl perdils; chapters of books; books exclively addrsg the spirual dimensns of the AIDS epimic or the experience of livg wh AIDS; doctral statements and posn papers about gays and lbians adopted by relig stutns; and blatantly homophobic treatments of the subject.

(Filmmakers Reed Cowan and Steven Greenstreet exame the role of the Mormon Church the battle agast same-sex marriage the documentary 8: The Mormon Proposn, as well as examg Mormon doctre on homosexualy (cludg church-approved programs to "cure" homosexualy), suici rat among gay teens Mormon muni, and misleadg ments om Mormon lears on the impact of Prop.

GAY SPIRUALY AND THE RADIL FAERI

(The eply personal valu of a gay mister who is planng to enter to his own same sex marriage and a relig-right activist fervently agast same sex marriage lli when they agree to exchange liv to bate same-sex marriage a fascatg social experiment. From nservative ral beef untry, to the heart of the urban gay muny; the men move to each others’ hom and liv and attempt to hang on to their belief systems while facg off wh the opposg social works. (This program provis an unflchgly hont look at the role of today's young Christians the gay bate: what they really thk, how they perceive the church, and what they wish other Christians knew.

SECTN 2: KNOWG GAYS AND LBIANS, RELIG CONFLICTS, BELIEFS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY

Age distributn among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are ag…. Generatnal hort among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are…. Genr posn among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are….

Racial and ethnic posn among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who intify as….

Immigrant stat among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are…. Edutnal distributn among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who have pleted….

Maral stat among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are…. Parent of children unr 18 among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who are….

Belief God among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who say they….

Importance of relign one's life among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who say relign is….

Attendance at relig servic among adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig% of adults who say homosexualy should be accepted who are Spirual but not relig who attend relig servic….